CDS Current Affairs Quiz: 1 October 2026

The correct answer is France. Varuna is the annual bilateral maritime exercise between the Indian Navy and the French Navy, and in its twenty-fourth edition the Indian warship Trishul sailed to the French port of Toulon to take part. Option A is wrong because the naval exercise India holds with the United Kingdom goes by a different name. Option C is wrong as well; the drill India conducts with Russia is a separate series and has nothing to do with Varuna. Option D is incorrect because the exercise with Japan is also a distinct series with its own name. A useful way to fix this in memory is to link the French connection with the ports and units named in this edition, Toulon as the port of call and the French ships Charles de Gaulle, Forbin and La Fayette, along with the nuclear-powered submarine Suffren that took part in the sea phase.

The correct answer is a frontline stealth frigate. That is how the ship has been described in the announcement of her visit to the Kenyan port, and a frigate of this class is a general purpose warship built with a reduced radar signature so that it is harder to detect at sea. Option A is wrong because an aircraft carrier is a far larger capital ship whose role is to operate fighter aircraft from its deck, and no carrier was involved in this visit. Option C is wrong because a submarine is an undersea platform and the ship in question is a surface combatant making a formal harbour call with ceremonial and community programmes. Option D is wrong because a survey vessel is a specialised ship for hydrographic charting rather than a frontline fighting unit. Only option B matches the description.

The correct answer is 1 October 2001. HQ IDS was established in New Delhi on that date, and the day is observed every year as Tri-Service Day; the organisation therefore completed 25 years and celebrated its Silver Jubilee under the theme of future readiness through jointness and integration. Option B is wrong because the body did not exist in that year, and an earlier date would not fit a Silver Jubilee falling now. Option C is wrong because that date belongs to no part of this story, and the founding was in October, not January. Option D is wrong because the post of Chief of Defence Staff and the Department of Military Affairs came much later than the raising of HQ IDS, so a date from this decade cannot be its founding day. Fix the date along with the name Tri-Service Day.

The correct answer is the 279th Annual Day. The Raksha Mantri launched the department’s publications and digital initiatives at this celebration held at DRDO Bhawan in New Delhi, and he congratulated the department on nearly three centuries of service to the nation, which fits an edition in the high two hundreds. Options A, B and D are near neighbours offered because an edition number is easy to misremember by a decade; none of them is the figure for this year. A useful cross-check for an aspirant is the phrase about three centuries of service, which rules out any edition in the low two hundreds. Also note the venue, DRDO Bhawan, which is sometimes swapped with South Block or Sena Bhawan in a question. So C is correct.

The correct answer is the 24th edition. The Ministry of Defence stated that INS Trishul arrived at Toulon to join the twenty-fourth edition of the exercise, which makes Varuna one of the longest-running bilateral naval exercises India takes part in. Options A and B, the 20th and 22nd editions, belong to earlier years of the same series and are the kind of near-miss figures a paper setter places to test whether the current edition has been noted carefully. Option D, the 26th, runs ahead of the present count and is therefore wrong. For the examination hall, the safest habit is to remember the edition number together with the year, so that the 24th edition is tied to 2026 and to the port of Toulon in France. Remember also that the ship arrived there on 22 September 2026 and was greeted with a ceremonial water cannon salute.

The correct answer is Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions. The visit of the Indian warship to the Kenyan port has been placed within the spirit of this framework, which expresses India's approach to working with friendly countries of the Indian Ocean Region on both security and development. Options A, C and D are invented expansions. They have been built from words that sound plausible in a maritime context, such as harbour, safety, alliance and oceans, and a candidate who remembers only that the name sounds like the Hindi word for ocean may fall for any of them. Examinations often test exactly this kind of acronym, so the safe approach is to learn the expansion word by word: mutual, holistic, advancement, security, growth, across regions. Only option B carries all of those elements in the right order.

The correct answer is “Future readiness through jointness and Integration”. Under this theme HQ IDS organised Trishakti Manthan, released a Silver Jubilee Book and a film on its milestones, and conferred CDS Unit Citations on personnel. Option A is wrong because Atmanirbharta in defence is the wider national goal that HQ IDS supports by working with research organisations, academia and industry on indigenous capability, but it was not the jubilee theme. Option C is wrong because joint training frameworks were only one of the contributions discussed at the event and no such slogan was adopted. Option D is wrong because cyber and space are among the emerging domains the organisation prepares the forces for, yet neither phrase formed the theme. Themes are a favourite one-mark question, so the exact wording matters.

The correct answer is eKUBER. The Treasury Single Account system, inaugurated for just-in-time release of funds to autonomous bodies under the Ministry of Defence, is fully integrated with RBI eKUBER. Option D is the trap: PRISM, which stands for Payment Routing and Integrated System Management, is the platform through which the Treasury Single Account itself is operationalised, and it belongs to the defence payments side rather than to the central bank. Option C is wrong because SPARSH is the System for Pension Administration (Raksha), on which a film was screened at the same event. Option B is wrong because a retail funds transfer system is not what a treasury account integrates with here. Keep eKUBER on the Reserve Bank side and PRISM on the Ministry side, and the question answers itself.

The correct answer is 205. The Commanding Officer, officers and crew of the ship laid a wreath at the Mazargues War Memorial in Marseille in remembrance of 205 Indian soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice during the World Wars. Options A, C and D offer figures close enough to be plausible, and each is wrong; such near figures are a common trap in examinations where only one number has been reported. Two details help the answer stick. First, the memorial stands at Marseille, while the ship was berthed at Toulon, so the city of the memorial and the port of call are different places on the French Mediterranean coast. Second, the wreath-laying was part of the harbour phase of the exercise, which also included cross-deck visits, an exchange of operational experience, a cultural evening on board and a friendly volleyball match between the two crews.

The correct answer is Mombasa, the Kenyan port where the frontline stealth frigate berthed for a goodwill call during her deployment. Option A is wrong because Dar es Salaam is the principal port of Tanzania, a neighbouring country on the same eastern African coast, which is what makes it a convincing distractor. Option B is wrong because Djibouti lies much further north, near the entrance to the Red Sea, and is not the port named in this visit. Option D is wrong because Port Victoria is the harbour of Seychelles, an island country of the western Indian Ocean. All four are ports that Indian warships visit in the course of deployments in the region, so the detail to fix in memory is the pairing of this particular ship with Mombasa in Kenya, along with the arrival date and the partner navy she engaged with there.

The correct answer is Trishakti Manthan held as a permanent annual review body. Trishakti Manthan was the event organised as part of the Silver Jubilee, featuring addresses by the Chief of Defence Staff and by the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff, and it is not described as a standing institutional mechanism of the kind listed in the other options. Option A is wrong as an answer because Ran Samwad is indeed named among the platforms that strengthen institutional mechanisms for jointness. Option B is wrong as an answer for the same reason, the Joint Commanders’ Conference being one of those platforms. Option C is likewise a genuine platform, the Combined Operational Review and Evaluation Programme, which supports structured deliberation on security challenges and improves joint warfighting across land, maritime, air, space, cyber and cognitive domains.

The correct answer is managing pay and allowances of Agniveers of the Indian Army. SAMAR-SETU runs from the Central Agniveer Pay and Accounts Office and handles the pay accounts of more than 2.3 lakh Agniveers through fully automated processes, which is why work on it figured in the Raksha Mantri Awards for Excellence 2026. Option A describes the National Compilation System, the single source for accounting and compilation of all defence expenditure, which was relaunched in a revamped form at the same event. Option C points to SAKSHAM, the bill audit and payment system now integrated with the Indian Army Financial Information System. Option D describes SPARSH, the System for Pension Administration (Raksha). Separating these four names is exactly what an examiner wants to test, so B is right.